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US Banks Passed Stress Tests

23 March 10:16 AM

• Unemployment growth to 13%
• Price drop by 50%
• Drop of housing price by 21%

In such a case, the loss of 19 largest banks would amount to 534 bln. dollars. Despite considerable drop of predicted capital, 15 out of 19 holding banking companies will keep their capital four times higher than its normative value.

According to Aleksei Afanasiev, the head of the Department of Portfolio Investments of Masterforex-V Academy, last week’s macroeconomic data was mostly positive:
1. Retail sales rose by 1.1% in February, taking into consideration seasonal fluctuations. In comparison to February 2011, sales have risen by 6.5%. January sales have risen from 0.4% to 0.6%.

2. Industrial production remained the same. Capacity ratio is falling. It has dropped by 78.7% or by 1.6 points from the average since 1972. Its value is 18.3% lower than before crisis. Capacity ratio in January has been lowered from 78.5% to 78.8%. Industrial output did not change in February. Market consensus was slightly worse than expected.
 

3. Reports of Philadelphia FRS about national production volume slow minor increase in January. Current activity index in March amounted to 12.5 and showed the increase by 2.3 basic points, which is the maximal point since April 2011. General business index remained almost the same in March and amounted to 20.2.

4. Weekly unemployment claims have dropped to 351 000. The four-week moving average is close to the lowest point since the beginning of 2008.

5. Consumer sentiment index dropped to 74.3 in March from 75.3 in February, which is lower than market consensus. Consumer’s general sentiment is rather weak and does not show certain signs of recovery. Small business index slightly rose in February. It has risen form 93.9 to 94.3, which is the 6^th rise in a row. However, the index remains at a rather low point due to slow economic growth.

Rally, which started since the beginning of the year, is getting weaker and casts pressure on investors’ psychology. We are currently observing overbought market, and there remains the only question: “will the future correction amount to 3-5% or 10-15%, or something else?”. We recommend redistributing the portfolio, for we believe that aggressive buying at current points are inappropriate.

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